


The Wolves of War

by Whuffie



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Werewolf, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-03 21:04:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whuffie/pseuds/Whuffie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deep in the Brecillian Forest, an Orlesian Warden leads Alistair, Wynne, and Oghren to try and solve the riddle of the werewolves so they can recruit the Dalish to stop the Blight.  Everything goes wrong when the Warden is bitten, and Alistair has to assume the role of leadership.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Lady's Guard

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU (Alternate Universe) story. The Wardens at the Joining in Ostagar all died, leaving a shunned, disliked, ornery young Orlesian to go to light the beacon with Alistair. I also took liberties on how fast the Curse spread when the subject was badly wounded.

_“You’ve been bitten. Bitten by a werewolf. Now you will become that which you have hunted so passionately.”_  
Shuler Hensley (as Frankenstein’s monster) – Van Helsing  
  
Louis braced his feet, weight on his back heel for stability, and put his full power behind the sword thrust as it as he plunged it into the gut of the werewolf. Pulling his lips back in a mask almost as feral as the beast trying to kill him, he felt internal organs and muscle yield in the path of deadly star metal. He followed through, muscles burning with comfortable familiarity, to the hilt of Starfang. Blood fountained crimson over his gauntlets.  
  
The werewolf screamed a jarring, primeval shriek which sounded too human, and gore splashed against the visor of Louis’ helm.  As the stench of battle, reeking hot fur and copper invaded his nostrils, he was almost beginning to feel homesick for the terrors of the Orlesian Courts. Grunting to himself to blot out mental distraction, he braced one foot flat against the monster’s carcass, and yanked the two handed weapon out. _Great, more coming. Happy days,_ he thought with biting, arid sarcasm.  
  
Spinning and keeping his balance in slick mud by grace of practice, he half sensed, half saw, another grey and brown furred body plummeting toward him. “Oghren!” he yelled, catching sight of the others in their group as he hefted Starfang across his body defensively. His own voice nearly deafened him with the visor shut. “Help Wynne!”  
  
Their healer had managed to stun a cluster of the pack into place and they were reeling unsteadily on hind paws or crumbled to their forelimbs. Experience fighting with her as part of his group had taught Louis it wouldn’t last long enough for her to retreat far. The werewolves were too fast and stronger than any of them had thought they’d be, and it was like trying to combat blurring tornadoes of claws and fangs.  
  
“Go!” Half pivoting, he caught sight of his fellow Warden, backing up from a tangled mountain of fur as it toppled to the side. “Alistair! Get my back!”  
  
The familiar, half drunken battle shout of, “here comes Oghren!” belted out above the din of snarling howls and the dwarf swung his sword in an upward arc, sending a blank eyed, shaggy head with a muzzle streaming lines of foam into the trunk of a tree. It hit with a sickening wet sound, and he tucked his chin down in a duck as fire flew from the end of Wynne’s staff. “Hey, watch where you’re pointing that thing!” he shouted, and swept his blade across the back of one of the werewolf’s legs, cutting out the tendons behind the knees.  
  
Sodding thing didn’t stop, even when it hit the ground, and the business end whipped around, almost crushing bone as its jaws clamped down around Oghren’s arm. Although Orzammar armor stood up against teeth, the hunk of drooling fur was shaking the dwarf like a dog with a rat. His shoulder wrenched in a world of barely felt pain as the Beserker talent exploded behind his eyes in a thin veil of red. “You want some of this, you sodding rug!” he bellowed triumphantly, “come and get it!” He rammed the pommel of his sword into the beast’s eye, rupturing it.  
  
The werewolf tried to rip his arm completely out of the socket, but Wynne’s concentration was solid as stone. Her arms crossed over her torso for a moment and she released a spell, pummeling the shaggy creature with a rock fist. It distracted the flea bait long enough for Oghren to yank his arm out from the vice of teeth. Once both his hands were wrapped around the sword hilt again, he added one more to the list of gruesomely piled bodies he’d been tallying up since coming to the surface.  
  
“Got it!” Alistair called out simultaneously in recognition, slamming his shield into the face of one of his adversaries. It bellowed in mingled pain and rage, slapping paw hands over it’s bleeding nostrils. The weres had advantages in speed, size and the power behind their blows was staggering, but in spite of Morrigan’s insinuations, Alistair wasn’t completely stupid. Maybe he didn’t always think things through and hadn’t seen a lot of the world, yet, but he had moments of good clarity. Templars didn’t recruit anyone who was truly dumb, as he’d once insisted.  After the first fracas with the werewolves, he found out they had weaknesses too. Their muzzles were more delicate and far easier to hit than breaking a man’s nose, and when upright, they weren’t as stable as down on all fours. Preferring to be able to use their claws, they tended to spend a lot of time reared up. When they were, they could be outmaneuvered or temporarily blinded if a warrior was fast enough.  
  
He felt an alternately cool and warm wave brush through his entire body as Wynne’s familiar healing spell cascaded through him, although he hadn’t suffered anything worse than a badly bruised wrist and a tear across the arm from a claw which got past his templar armor. Someone else in the group obviously hadn’t had his luck and she’d sent the spell for all of them at once. Unable to check on Wynne and Oghren, Alistair rammed his sword upward, sending it through the bottom of a werewolf’s jaw and through the top of its skull. Wrenching it back out, slinging bits of blood and fur from the edge, he fell back to try and keep the pack from Louis. “Maker,” he breathed, “there’s so many!”  
  
Louis didn’t even bother to offer his in-eloquent grunt which passed for conversation. Had all Duncan’s new recruits not died in the Joining, he wouldn’t have found himself far from home and full of fleas in a country which reeked of garbage and wet dogs.  Had it not been for Loghain, there might have been men who he more readily called brothers coming across the borders instead of forcing him to slog through the forest against elves with spear shafts up the ass and werewolves who wanted everything, including said elves, to be turned into mulch.  The Maker could be a right bastard when he thought he was being funny, but the Blight had to be stopped.  The other Wardens may have given Ferelden up, or they might have been waiting at the border, but Louis wasn’t an optimist.  The months were wearing them down, and they were hunted almost every corner they turned in a city. It was almost refreshing to be hated because he was human rather than Orlesian when they’d tried to make civil contact with the Dalish, but to his Ferelden Warden’s credit, nationality hadn’t mattered with Alistair. He’d followed with an almost blind loyalty since they’d lost Duncan, and took orders well.  
  
Unfortunately, he had almost as little Grey Warden training as Alistair, and had been sent to Ferelden because of that incident back home… Damn tattoo was permanent. Of course he’d been pissed when he sobered up. It was supposed to bring him luck and keep him from harm, which in a twisted, ironic way, it had.  Because he was one of the rawest recruits, his own mentor had curtly informed him he’d be punted “where he was needed.” Duncan had sent him with Alistair to light the signal fire because they were the greenest. Now an Orlesian was trying to save Ferelden. _Screwed up world._  
  
Claws skittered across his cuirass with a screeching sound to make teeth grind as Louis stepped back, throwing his blade into an arc which swept across the werewolf’s belly.  Parts spilled out which shouldn’t have ever seen daylight. Alistair had another down, blade going through the matted throat in a fast, efficient swipe, and Louis jabbed his sword behind him. He had to twist his head around so far it almost threw his neck out of alignment to be able to see with the limited visibility inside a heavy helmet, but he rammed the point all the way through the hairy hide and back out the other side.  
  
Because he was blind over his opposite shoulder, he never saw the charge until it hit him worse  than Ogres hurling boulders. For seconds without end, he didn’t know what had happened, and he was borne down to the ground with tusks of teeth trying to grab through his armor. Pressure crushed around his neck so that he was having a hard time breathing, and Starfang was knocked out of his hands.  
  
Reeking, rancid grey fur jammed into the visor slit, poking into his eyes, and he groped blindly to grab a handful of hair and muscle.  Futilely, he tried to shove the monster, or get one of his legs in front of himself so he could utilize the strength to push it off. “Need some help!” he bellowed as the werewolf cranked back one of its tree trunk thick arms and slashed downward, hooking a claw into the crevasse of the pauldron. Ripping it off with brute force which made the leather straps dig into his skin through the underlying padding, it flew, giving the beast a chance to bury its snarling muzzle, worrying its way through Louis’ cuirass. Sheer brute force and a hurricane of frenzied, rabid lupine insanity was thrown into the ring against fine dwarven armor, but the metal was losing.  
  
“Alistair!” Wynne cried in alarm, unleashing a paralyzing spell onto a werewolf so it was frozen almost comically midair, teeth splayed, claws reaching, trying to get at her throat. “Behind you — it’s Louis!” She rallied her magical abilities to try and do what she could to help their leader, ignoring her own peril because the spell on the suspended mountain of viciousness wouldn’t hold it indefinitely. Tapping into a lesser and more personal healing, she threw the spell toward Louis, feeling a well controlled sense of concern start to rise through her breath.  
  
Overwhelmed by sheer force, Louis was helplessly pinned beneath the brute, and it was Orlesian blood spilling the ground rather than lupine.  Alistair whirled, throwing his shoulder behind his shield and launching all his weight against the werewolf which had his fellow Warden down. He might as well have hurled himself headlong into a solidly rooted tree. The impact rattled his bones and barely distracted the hulking creature as it finally found meat, and buried its snout over Louis’ shoulder, audibly snapping his clavicle and rooting for his throat. Wynne’s spells didn’t stop the scream out of Louis, nor the spew of profanity which was right behind it, although as his bone knitted almost as soon as it was broken. He hit the monster in the jaw with the heel of his hand, aiming for the nose, but missing and doing little more than knocking its teeth together as its massive head lashed back.  
  
“I’m comin’, Lou!” Oghren yelled, hoisting his sword back, but narrowed eyes shot through with gold and red were riveted on him. The lead female of the pack wrinkled her muzzle back from her teeth, snarling a low, keening menacing threat. Her legs coiled under her, muscle rippling beneath her pelt, and she launched herself into Oghren before the intended blow could fall on her mate. Her fangs snapped, scratching harmlessly over linked metal plates as they rolled over each other, scattering leaves and blood, trying to maintain an advantage long enough to kill. Oghren didn’t hale from the most nimble race, but he was strong and so well wrapped up in the Beserker frenzy that he held his ground.  
  
“Die already!” Alistair fumed at the top of his lungs, flipping his sword over in his hands and plunging it downward, trying to hit the heart of the werewolf savaging Louis. It had taken only seconds, but Louis was being torn to pieces in front of all of them as teeth as long as human fingers were digging into skin, ripping him open as easily as wet cloth. “Maker, no…” he breathed as jaws clamped around the front of Louis’ ribs and he thought for a moment the Warden’s heart was about to be extracted. Wynne’s petrification spell took effect almost simultaneously to Alistair’s sword strike, trapping his blade into the stone wolf, although through their combined effort, it rolled over to its side, dead.  
  
Grabbing a dagger out of his boot, it was hardly Alistair’s first love at close range, but he hadn’t any choice. The spell had to wear itself out before he could recover his main weapon, and he poised himself next to their leader. Louis had lost his helm along with other parts of his armor, and was blanched pale as a shroud. An unhealthy tinge of grey shaded around his eyes and lips which was prominent against his black hair and neat beard. Alistair gulped on a dry throat, not having time to think or letting himself. Louis had survived the tower of Ishal, so no mere werewolf would kill him … would it?  
  
Oghren, by some miracle, had actually sprung the female’s jaws apart, breaking the lower as he crushed her nose in one armored fist and grabbed her bottom teeth with the other, prying them apart. “Crazy dusters don’t know when to quit,” he spat disparagingly, and scrambled out from under her bulk to decapitate her. He offered up a liquor ripe belch, spitting out blood as he pulled his helm off. Most of it wasn’t his, and after Wynne had dispatched the creature trapped in bands of paralysis, the dead she-wolf was the last.  
  
Wynne flung herself to Louis’ side, dropping to her knees across the Orlesian’s body from Alistair. He’d already stuffed his hands into his pack, yanking out bandages and poultices as Wynne tried to stop the bleeding which sheer ferocity had overwhelmed her earlier healing spells. If not for magic, the man surely would have fallen already, but he was managing to cling tenaciously to life by a few threads. “Louis. I want you to focus on my voice.”  
  
Alistair pulled a stoppered bottle from a tangle of bandages and yanked the cork out with his teeth, thrusting it to Wynne. She propped Louis’ head back and forced it down his throat. “Swallow this, it will help you.” Tilting his head back farther to open his throat and let gravity help snake the potion into the Orlesian’s body, she anxiously rallied her weary pool of mana, trying to scrape out enough to push another healing spell into their dying leader.  
  
“Are you doing that?” Alistair asked in an incredulous, low voice, his hands frozen over one of the worst gouges which had turned Louis’ torso into a chaotic field of bloody furrows. He tilted his head to one side, brown eyes fascinated in spite of himself. Poised midway in the process of putting pressure on the wounds to help stop the bleeding, he withdrew, staring as muscle and tissue knit almost before their eyes. Places where bone was lain bare had begun to rapidly heal, and Alistair closed is fist lightly over the clump of medical supplies.  
  
“No…” That gave Wynne the greatest reason for alarm since she’d almost died to defend the children of the Circle, and the color drained from her cheeks. “Alistair, we need to get away from him,” she ordered in a firm, calm voice. “Immediately.”  
  
“What!” The word was a full goblet of disbelief and injury that she could begin to suggest such a thing. “He’s wounded, Wynne, he could die! We have to help him!” Surely he’d not heard her say what he thought she had.  
  
Rising with her staff in hand, the vast damage torn through Louis was rapidly reducing into superficial splashes in his hide, and she shook her head slowly. “He’s been bitten and infected with the Curse.” They’d come across Danyla, a Dalish elf who had suffered the same rapid infliction not two days before. During an attack, she’d been wounded so badly the Curse spread with record speed compared to her brethren ailing in the elven camp.  
  
“What do you mean, ‘infected with the Curse,’” Oghren demanded. “You’re not telling me he’s about to turn into one of those things are you?”  
  
“If he is, then we need to help him,” Alistair insisted, a note of panic starting to creep into the edges of his argument. He refused to stand up, and remained kneeling beside Louis.  
  
Louis’ dark blue eyes snapped open, dilating and infusing slowly with a golden green color as his head lazily rolled toward his brother Warden, and he clamped his teeth together as someone loosed a fire through his veins. Squeezing his eyes closed, he jerked upright, and felt his teeth moving in their sockets. A primal scream wrenched itself out of his gut and exploded through the forest, sending a flock of birds out of the trees with a flurry of feathers.  
  
“Get… get … away from me!” he bawled, rolling to his hands and knees. His spine arched and bones snapped under his flesh, pressing in painful, visible angles under his tanned skin. Losing control, he shuddered violently and his entire body began jerking in spasms. Half growling, spit flew from between teeth which were cutting into his lower lip, and his tongue was elongating without room in his mouth for its residence. “No,” he panted in abrupt contradiction. “Kill me!” he pleaded in the next second as his fevered mind finally managed to understand what was happening to him.  
  
“No!” Alistair shouted back at him, bouncing to his feet and shaking his head furiously. “We ca–“  
  
“ _Do it! That’s an order!_ ” the Orlesian screamed so loudly his throat vibrated. He thrashed his head around to pin Alistair with feral golden green eyes. His skull was reshaping itself, pushing expanding fangs forward, dark furred ears tapering up to points through shaggy hair. The wounds had almost killed him, he presumed, surprisingly calm about it considering the blazing rage and thirst to tear Alistair’s throat from his nape to guzzle down meat. Muscles boiled like hot lava beneath his flesh, shredding what was left of his clothes and straining out of the remainder of his armor. Claws pushed out from his fingernails, popping out like a bloody birth, and black fur churned out of his flesh in damp, uneven patches.  
  
“No!” Alistair’s voice almost cracked in anguished indecision as he yanked his sword out of the corpse of his last kill. He couldn’t dispatch the only other Grey Warden in Ferelden, his best friend and last link to Duncan’s memory. He couldn’t….  
  
“He’s right,” Oghren said in a graveled, somber voice. “It’s too late. The Curse is taking him and changing him. We owe it to him to put him out of his misery.”  
  
Turning to Wynne, Alistair’s eyes pleaded with her as his fingers convulsed on the hilt of his sword. “We can’t…” but the argument was losing potency. Louis’ back bowed higher, and feet were stretching while his femor was shortening, reshaping his hind legs like hot wax. He yelled again, trying to communicate, but nothing which came spitting out of his blunt muzzle was any more articulate than a rabid howl.  
  
“I’ll do it,” Oghren volunteered with a long, depressed sigh, and twisted his grip on the handle of his sword, ready to make sure it was clean. He owed Louis that much, and he’d be sure it was quick. He’d have no more suffering and would be let go the way a warrior should, not ending up mad and turning on his own friends.  
  
Louis was fully beast, his tongue lolling out as he pulled one leg up beneath him, and Oghren lifted his blade. When the werewolf swiveled it’s head, the dwarf could almost swear he saw intelligence and recognition, waiting for the end. Oghren raised his weapon, and Louis closed his eyes in silent submission to a blow which never fell. Alistair rammed into Oghren with his shoulder, and even as well centered and strong as the dwarf was, it threw him off balance enough that he never delivered the final, fatal stroke. “Hey!” he protested furiously, turning a shade closer to the red in his ponderous mustache, “what do you think you’re doing!”  
  
“I can’t let you!” Alistair threw back at him, and Louis pulled himself to full height, his feral eyes meeting with Wynne’s as she summoned the magical forces at her command to stop him. For a moment, while Warden and warrior bristled, werewolf and mage stared at one another in understanding. What was left of Louis’ human brain snapped to a decision, and Wynne’s talents were never launched. The massive werewolf dropped to all fours and in a blur of black and grey pelt, and he flung himself into the forest, paws kicking grass up behind him. The pale greens and dimming evening shadows swallowed him as neatly as it had all the others of his kind, taking him in as one of their own.  
  
“Way to go,” Oghren spat hotly. “Now he’s going to out there, suffering, or worse, turned into a mindless killer. He may be the one who is tearing us up next, did you think about that? You really think that’s doing him a service?”  
  
Desperately grasping at straws, Alistair knew better than to take Oghren’s flared challenge. It would do none of them any good, and the Warden backed down. He shoved his fingers through the thatch of hair which stuck up over his forehead, trying to keep himself calm enough to think in a straight line. “If we find Witherfang, we can end the curse. Isn’t that what Zathrian said? Right? That’s what he told us, wasn’t it, back at their camp? We have to get Witherfang’s heart and it will save their warriors. It will save Louis, too, right?” Babbling as he was prone to do when under too much stress, he deliberately cut himself off. “We just have to find this Witherfang and we could save him. We have to save him!” He hadn’t gone so wild with the feeling of walls closing in on him since he’d thought Louis was going to die at Flemeth’s hut. Everyone he cared about had been gone, Duncan leaving the worst pain behind, but it also would have meant he would have been forced to deal with the entire Blight alone. Although there were others with him now, Louis had always been the one who made the decisions, and Alistair preferred it that way. He was no leader.  
  
“Then we must find Witherfang,” Wynne told them both quietly and reasonably. There was no use in crying over spilled milk, as the saying went. Perhaps Alistair was correct, and they might actually find a way of rescuing their young leader, but her hopes were not nearly so high. They were too beset with the burdens of reality and grim possibilities. They’d all been fortunate thus far, and hadn’t lost any of their small number, but there had been close calls. It might only be a matter of time before one of them fell beyond healing magic, or already had. Oghren was sadly correct, and although some of the werewolves spoke, Louis might just as easily be next to attack them. “Where do we go from here?”  
  
Stunned, Alistair twisted his neck to look at Oghren then back at the Mage. “What? Me? No… no, no, no. I can’t lead! Bad things happen when I lead! We get lost, and the next thing you know I wake up stranded, without any pants!” It popped out of his mouth automatically as a joke as he cleaned his sword and put it into place on his back. “I can’t possibly lead,” he protested more seriously when no one laughed, waving his hands in front of him in negation.  
  
“You don’t have a choice, Kid,” Oghren told him, wiping his own blade across his hand in a pile of leaves before stowing it. “You’re the Grey Warden around here.”  
  
“But -–“  
  
“So what do we do?” Wynne pressed kindly, folding her arms over her chest, not budging an iota. “How do we find Witherfang?”  
  
“I – I … How should I know?” he insisted helplessly in frustration, pushing his hand through his hair again, trying to ward off the threat of an oncoming headache.  
  
“You’re going to have to make a decision.” Wynne might have never counseled a reluctant Grey Warden until recently, but she’d had many experiences with a variety of different personalities in the tower. Obstinately refusing to step into the leadership role, she patiently waited for Alistair to collect himself. There was much potential in the young man, although he seemed reluctant to embrace it. Unfortunately, circumstance had forced his hand, and although stopping the Blight was something they all wanted, it was the Grey Wardens who were always at the front. Alistair’s moment of truth had arrived, if he wanted it or not.  
  
Taking a deep breath, the young Warden dropped his hands to his side and swallowed, his face contorting like he’d just tasted Deathroot. “All right, but don’t blame me if we end up lost,” he warned, trying to find a lighter side, but for once, failing miserably. “Louis was taking us to look for whoever stole that talking tree’s acorn. We’ll keep going east and see if we can find whoever that is.” The entire Blight was resting on a talking tree and Alistair’s decisions. Great. No pressure or anything.  
  
“Then hopefully it will get us through that barrier…thing.” Alistair lacked the vocabulary for the ward so filled it in with the only one he had handy. At least Morrigan wasn’t present to mock him about it. “We know the werewolves lair is on the other side, and they’re protecting Witherfang. Let’s do that.”  
  
Feeling like someone just dropped the volume of the Circle Tower on his shoulders, the Grey Warden bent down to turn over Louis’ armor. It was too ponderous to carry with them, but he took the shed weapons. Starfang, in particular, was something Louis would want back if -- when, Alistair adamantly corrected, trying to convince himself -- he was cured.


	2. The Watchers in the Wood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Louis suffers through the final stages of transformation, but he isn't alone in the forest.

_“When the world is not the same as our minds believe, then we are in a nightmare. And nothing is worse than a nightmare. Except one you can’t wake up from.”_ – Lance LeGault Werewolf  
  
The hourglass shattered, its precious grains were dust in the wind. Past became a field of half remembered blurs from which to draw instinct, and future meant nothing. There was only the Now as Louis drug a strange body which was not his own beneath dripping, overhanging ferns and collapsed heavily onto his side. The earth was cool and his fevered flesh was crawling like ants had burrowed under his skin, leaving poison trails wending in their wake. Curled into a fetal position, he tried to block out the burn, laying his head on its side and closing his amber green eyes to the blinding pain of dim light. Dead vegetation played havoc on his new senses, packing the smells of rot into his nostrils and bringing information which only his rapidly changing brain was able to process. One triangular ear flicked fitfully as he could hear the scratch of a cricket’s feet scrambling on a leaf a stone’s throw away, and the pounding of a rabbit’s heart beneath ground told them both it did not believe in the safety of its own burrow.  
  
Louis’ huge frame convulsed spasmodically, and his tongue worked, pressing against the back of his teeth then through them, often inadvertently being bitten as his jaws gnashed together. Eyes rolled white in their sockets, and his black lips pulled back and relaxed again over hooked, ivory teeth. Hunger and rage gnawed inexorably away at what was left of his humanity as the Curse seared and rampaged through powerful limbs. There were times he slept, wakened, then fainted into another stupor until the metamorphosis had pulled him apart like wet clay, only to throw him brutally together into something new. Pawing at the sheen of black and brown decayed leaves beneath him, he finally heaved himself to all fours as moonlight stabbed through the canopy above, spilling over his muzzle like cool silver. The night called to him, singing demands to join a primal dance, and when he’d emerged, the Grey Warden Louis had been ripped asunder for a tumult of rage.  
  
He and the forest merged as he stood erect and proud beneath the moon, its light reflecting flashes of red in his eyes. His stare transfixed on the distant, half filled orb as the lifeblood of the wood pulsed through his veins, and gentle wind ran cool, comforting fingers through his mane. The driving, blind need of the hunt whispered through his blood, insinuating itself into his brain as he threw his head back to the distant stars, opened his throat, and howled.  
  
The mere act of proclaiming himself reborn the dominant predator above all who dared to tread within the forest encompassed the whole of his life for the long minute he held the wild, carrying note. When the need had been satisfied, he dropped again to all fours, dipping his nose to the earth, and searched out prey-scent. There was both hunger and the rage of bloodlust to be acknowledged.  The transformation left him the need of meat in his belly. Saliva built in his mouth, and he licked his chops silently as black nostrils dilated. No one needed to show him the way nor teach him the means to take what was his.  
  
Catching a sweet, healthy scent of digested grasses and sunlight, he snapped his head upward, eyes penetrating and sharply alert for the deer herd which he knew he would find. The time to hunt was upon him. Running swifter than any wolf, and a hundred times more lethal, broad paws propelled him through the patterned shadows of black and green. Damp ferns and plants brushed past his fur as he cut silently through them, and tendrils of vines and moss trailed over his back as their newest addition prowled his domain.  
  
While two humans and a dwarf huddled about a campfire, trying to catch snatches of sleep to ward off exhaustion while they rotated a constant watch, Louis reveled in the deep darkness, slashing open the belly of a buck with his teeth and feasting on quivering meat bolted down his throat. It was savory, full of noonday sun and the edge of the rutting time when the young buck would have tried to assert itself a new mate. Blood doused over Louis’ muzzle and ran down his gullet as bones popped effortlessly and he gorged himself, ironically eating better than he had in almost two weeks as a human with a bow over his shoulder.  
  
Once the kill had been reduced to little more than a wet stain seeping into the forest floor, he sought out a river to slake his thirst, and set about licking his chops and fur clean. The water tasted of the mountains, and smelled of freedom. Thus sated, he curled up beside the river bank, one ear constantly on vigil, and slept. How long he napped to the tune of the water gamboling over the stones, he could not have said, but the darkness had begun to fade dimly in the east. A nagging instinct began to tug at him like a fly lodged in his ear, and might have been what wakened him from his light slumber. Kill. The demand embedded in all the werewolves from Witherfang raked through his brain. Kill. Unlike the others, however, the buzz pricking him gave his violence an odd sense of direction. There was only one specific prey only which would make the annoyance be still. Somehow he knew their blood would burn, their stench would be so foul everything else of the forest would avoid them, and they would emanate an almost palatable evil. _Hunt. Kill._  
  
Not entirely following his natural five senses, he relied as much on something more mystical which was beyond his ability to question. It pulled him, a silent shadow, through the woods, gliding gracefully as he leaped across a shallow stream, and avoided restless Sylvans as they creaked their own ancient, tortured voices.  
  
 _Kill._  
  
Although he no longer had a name for the Darkspawn nor understood why it was he hunted them so fervently, he followed the annoyance which made his teeth itch until their pervasive stink pummeled his sensitive nose. They were meandering through the wood as if they belonged, invading his territory. That alone would have been enough to set him into blood frenzy, and he did not hesitate as he would have had he been human, calculating which were Genlock, Hurlock, Emissary or Ogre. Relying on his own raw power and dominance as the top predator of the wood, he threw himself into their midst, biting, slashing and clawing, abandoning himself to the blind, euphoric bliss of his own rage.  
  
Their blood splattered up into his eyes, burning like acid on his gums and tongue as he bodily pinned a hurlock to the ground. His jaws sank into its throat, and with a swift, clean motion, he reared his head back. Ripping flesh popped like soaked linens being flipped out until the malevolently grinning creature no longer moved. It appeased the blood thirst, but before he could properly enjoy it, fire exploded about him from the air. Crouching low to the ground, the rank stench of singed fur invaded his delicate nostrils, and Louis whipped around, ignoring the sword slash which tore across his ribs from a genlock. Propelling himself with a few mere leaps onto the Emissary, he made short work of it.  Fangs sank into its face, and lifting himself full height, he shook it like a child’s doll until the neck snapped.  He tossed it aside when it stopped twitching.  
  
Their very stench rendered him effectively all but blind, but the battle was oddly one sided, for all the fact they bore armor and he had nothing but natural speed, strength and a deeply buried Grey Warden’s instinct for killing darkspawn. The carnage partially helped assuage his inner tumult and he worried some of the corpses, slinging them back and forth like a dog with a rat. They were wasted meat. He could not eat them, but it made him feel slightly less fevered to rip them to shreds with tooth and claw.  
  
So the days flowed by in Louis’ life and he would hunt to feed his belly, then slaughter darkspawn on the sacrificial alter of his rage. One hour blurred into the next, and he was lost to himself.  
  
In the midst of his killing spree on the eighth day, he’d failed to notice he had gathered an audience. The brown and gold furred alpha werewolf crept forward through the knives of moonlight, his hunched body barely making a trail before the underbrush closed in around him. He was so wary and careful of where he placed his paws that he might have been just another smudge against the backdrop. Others padded behind him obediently, lifting their heads and lowering them in a bobbing pattern as they scented the winds and gave reassurance or signals to one another through body language.  
  
Swiftrunner tilted his head to one side, and light fell in a shaft over the applied markings on one eye which he used in conjunction with other war paint. It designated his superior station among the Cursed. “Hrrr,” he muttered in guttural, but intelligible voice to the others in the pack, scratching his chest thoughtfully with his claws. “He attacks these… creatures, but never anything else.” He uttered an involuntary half snort, part growl and twisted an ear toward part of the pack. “I do not understand.”  
  
“We should take him to the Lady,” a silver backed female growled, bobbing her nose submissively in recognition to the alpha’s authority. “Perhaps he was a Dalish. Changed. One of us now.”  
  
“No,” Swiftrunner hunched his body more closely to the ground and a fern bowed over his back. “I do not trust him. He is different. He smells of those,” he gestured to the Ogre which Louis had buried his head almost to his shoulders, disemboweling it. “He is like those hu-mans we met before. The ones who kill our brothers and sisters. The ones sent by the treacherous Dalish.” Unlike Louis or the newly indoctrinated Dalish who had been killed once their transformations were complete, Swiftrunner was whelped while curled in the protective curve of a mother werewolf’s body. Like all the Brecillian forest pack, he was descended from men and women who were infected, but had never known walking naked of fur on two legs. It did not stop them for longing to be human as their ancestors had been, but they had never known what it was to think as men did.  
  
“Then that is the best reason of all to take him to the Lady,” Quicksilver argued. She had the right, for she was second in the pack having fought hard for the honor, and beloved mate to Swiftrunner. “She will calm him. He is one of us now, and she will know what to do with him.”  
  
“Hrrr.” Swiftrunner clicked his jaws together and whipped in front of Quicksilver, towering over her as he flashed his teeth and lifted his ruff, displaying domination. His mate did not make eye contact and gave token homage of lifting her chin and showing her throat. “Perhaps,” he grated like pulling a boulder from thick mud, because he did not want to admit it, “you are right.” It was difficult for him to set aside instinct for reason and constantly battle his nature, but the Lady had shown him the way. The adoration he and his pack brothers felt for her was almost worshipful, and he had all faith in her plan. “If he will come.” There was more than concern for the well being of the Lady in the pit of his bestial brain, for the intruder was heavier than the light limbed Dalish female who had come into their midst then abandoned the pack. The male who was worrying the corpse of the Ogre by tearing it apart and scattering it was fit, potent, and equal weight.


	3. The Pack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Louis and the werewolves come face to face and explanations are due.

Chapter Three: The Pack  
  
 _“For the strength of the wolf is the pack and the strength of the pack is the wolf.”_ Rudyard Kipling  
  
 _The pack._  
  
It was less rational words in Louis’ brain than idea and emotion. Churned up in his consciousness, he acutely and desperately needed it. Pack. Others. Only when he found the pack could there be completion to run beneath the moon, hunt as a unit, howl, and breed. The allure was sweet as cool water on a parched throat, beckoning to him with promising arms. Stalking away from his kill, he pawed at his face, then shoved himself into the grass muzzle first to sponge away part of the ichor and cleanse his senses.  
  
Freedom. The pack. Hunting. No concerns. No archdemon. The sizzling final thought gave him pause, bringing an image of a monstrous lizard seen briefly … somewhere … deep below the earth where no wolf should ever have been … and stalked his dreams. Rage swelled up over him and broke over an already easily provoked temper. He would kill it, if only he knew where it was. Not in the forest, or he would have known. Immediate action was stymied with a brief whine of confusion, and it slid backward into the fog of his mind against more immediate concerns.  
  
 _The pack._   They were coming.  He could smell their hot breath and dry fur.  
  
Swiftrunner approached cautiously on all fours with Quicksilver and the others trailing just behind him, his arched shoulders in a posture of dominion. “You must listen,” he broached, rearing to his hind legs and flipping out a forepaw in a human gesture. Their world was one communicated through the language of body rather than words, using them to cherish their tenuous hold on humanity. “We will help you calm your rage, but you must listen to us.”  
  
Louis froze, leveling his head at the end of his neck and pointing his muzzle forward, hackles spiking down his spine. A low, warning growl stewed through his throat, and his immediate reactions were torn between challenge or submission for a place in the pack. Words confused him, and he cocked his head to one side, comprehension creeping over his burning brain only slowly when Swiftrunner refused to either challenge or submit. Although he did not understand why, the oddly formed barks and growls the alpha was using to communicate rather than body speech meant something to him. It occurred to him that he should have the same ability and it should come more naturally than the howls, but how such a thing was possible he couldn’t fathom. Snarls reverberated in his chest, vibrating as he sculpted them into something intelligible, although the thick, stiff lips were never meant for it. There was no question that he would join them. They were the pack, and he belonged with them. “Lrrrr…. lee-ad then.”  
  
Swiftrunner tipped down his nose, regarding the new werewolf.  He had managed speech, but the newcomer was confused.  Dormant thoughts tried to usurp anger and instinct. There was something Louis was supposed to be doing… something greatly important which had nothing to do with filling his belly nor running with his brothers. Brothers… An image swam up and turned over like a cold, white dead fish in the blackness. There were no scents associated with them, only foreign babbling and memories.  
  
 _“Louis, don’t make me regret this.” Nicholas strode beside him through darkened fortress halls, armored heels rapping the authority of a former Chevalier.  His aristocratic features belied the concern for his decision. Grey shot through the hair at his temples and he’d become a Warden voluntarily over a decade before, managing to survive not only his Joining but the darkspawn. A Blight was coming, and although it the incursions were heaviest in Ferelden, the older Wardens were beginning to feel the stirring of the archdemon in their dreams. Recruits were vital, and Duncan, the Warden leader of Ferelden, was soon to arrive and share their concerns. There was also talk in Court of the Ferelden monarch coming to terms with the Empress._  
  
 _Nicholas had been alive when Maric lead the rebels against Orlias and cared as much for it as he might have a pitchfork in a stack of hay. What concerned him was the Blight, only the Blight, and Louis, who seemed to possess only one social talent in life – annoy nobility with his monosyllabic, harsh, single retorts and lack of patience. There was no question of Louis’ battle capabilities. He fought like it was all he’d done since the day he was born, but making him a Warden was inviting problems for the Order that they didn’t need during an impending Blight if he couldn’t curb his temper._  
  
 _Louis grunted without inflection and kept walking…._  
  
 _…. “You know I can’t let this go!” Nicholas tilted his head up to the ceiling and unleashed a frustrated sigh, resisting the barbaric urge to backhand Louis for his stupidity. “You’ve gone much to far in your insubordination. I’m sending you to Ferelden with Duncan. There, you can fight the Blight where it starts and where you’ll do the most good. Maker watch over you.”_  
  
 _… “Join us brothers and sisters…” A new voice, younger and more compassionate as he and Alistair stood with Daveth, Ser Jory, and a young dwarven girl. “Join us in the shadows where we stand vigilant. Join us as we carry the duty that can not be forsworn. And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten. And that one day we shall join you….”_  
  
 _… All three had died. Brothers and sisters. Death. Loghain. Ferelden’s betrayal of its own. Home. Wardens. Nicholas. Alistair. Duty._  
  
He bit his own tongue, using the pain to clear his murky brain. Louis. My name is Louis, and I’m a human. Orlesian. Clutching his hand paws over his eyes, he felt his own claws prick into his fur and mashed the pads against his cheeks. Raw, red rage pulsed through him, smearing memories of home and duty with running unbound through the forest with his brothers in the thrall of his own senses. They would defend their territory together, and in the pack he would fight for his place, his mate his…  
  
 _No! My. Name. Is. Louis._ He was losing himself, and falling into exactly what the Dalish storyteller had told them he’d feared most. If he didn’t hold onto his humanity, he was going to be worse than dead. _My mother’s name was Marguerite, my father is Evrard. I joined the Grey Wardens because I …_ Although he could recall vividly the pain of the Joining which was rivaled by the burning in his blood, he was losing the details. The harder he groped for them, the faster they slipped through his fingers. Clinging tenaciously to his linage, he began to repeat it to himself as a rote chant in his mind to drum out the tantalizing scents and sounds of the night. _Think! My mentor’s name was Nicolas before I was turned over to Duncan._ The memory should have been clear as fresh ink on a page, but it was being tattered around the edges, erased by musky scents on the wind. I’m a Grey Warden, he reminded himself mercilessly, sliding his alien hands down a distorted face. Not distorted. Perfect. Open jaws for the kill. Crush bone. Strong. Hunt. The Blight. Two alien streams of thought merged into one within his pounding skull. There will be no forest, not hunts, no men or loups garou if the Blight isn’t stopped. Ironically, that thought managed to bring a modicum of peace between his duel poles.  
  
 _This country reeks like wet dog even worse than ever._ Jerking a forearm up under his nose and sniffing, he abruptly realized he was smelling himself. _Great. Just great._  
  
The last thing he’d been doing with the others was following a wild rabbit chase for a tree which decided to recruit them into finding its acorn. Even had he tried, he’d never have been able to cook up a more farcical idea, but he hoped they’d keep going. It was the only way they’d found to get through a mystical barrier which was shielding the heart of the forest and Witherfang. In the final battle they were going to need the Dalish and anyone else who would throw their lot in to try and save the country.  
  
If it came to it, Louis knew himself expendable, and if there was no cure for the Curse he’d be doomed to barking at the moon for the rest of his life. That wasn’t a pleasant thought, but the Blight had to be stopped. He hoped Alistair remembered that, because Louis was in no fit state to travel with them any longer. Between the waves of pain crumbling his nerves raw to the sporadic need to rip out throats, he was a too big a liability. Pack? They’re the pack? one side of him puzzled. Whatever, the human part grumped at it, and he noticed Quicksilver for the first time as she was keenly watching him, remaining in step as her golden eyes bored into him.  
  
“Who are you?” the she-wolf asked after he returned her stare, showing his strength without holding it long enough to provoke. Her meaning was clear, and she understood in some way that he was not born in the forest with fur and milk teeth.  
  
“Louis,” he managed to wad his own name up in his mouth and spit it out as something almost intelligible. The name itself confused the female werewolf, as the names they took for themselves were more descriptive or guttural, rather than what humans chose.  
  
It was difficult for her to pronounce, and she rolled it about inside of her muzzle, sampling the oddness of it before she could actually get close to it. She seemed to also grasp what it meant, for they were not the mindless, unintelligent beings from legend. “You were human?”  
  
“Was. Yes.” What good could come of hiding it? They already sensed him for an outsider, and there was no benefit in a lie. “I am Orlesian.” It would mean nothing to any of them, and had it, he doubted he would have mentioned it. The admission of his ancestry to any other native of Ferelden would have automatically had any reaction from mild suspicion, to reaching discreetly for a weapon, to openly running him out of town. Most of it for good reason, but to the werewolves, it meant nothing.  
  
Quicksilver tried the strange word, and gave up on it after a few seconds because it did not conform well to her limited vocal ability. She had other questions for him which were more important to her and pressed on. “What was it like?” Even Swiftrunner turned a curious ear in their direction.  
  
“Hrrr?” Louis blinked, swinging his muzzle toward her, his fur creasing between his eyes, perplexed at the question. “Being Orlesian?”  
  
“I do not know what ‘Orr rr lessh ian’ is. What was it like to be human,” she clarified. “You lived without the rage or the curse. You were with humans all the time. What was it like?” she elaborated as they all circumvented several twisted trees which looked as if something very large had tied them into knots.  
  
Just what, exactly, lived in these woods aside from the werewolves and hostile trees? Louis wondered with a cold chill setting his fur on end. For the first time, he was beginning to have a full picture about the lives of the creatures with which he had been Cursed. How could he possibly explain it to them, who had never seen a city or known a lack of killing compulsion? The exercise in reaching through his human memory helped him, so he tried to give an adequate answer. “You do not have to always kill. It’s quiet inside. The constant anger is gone, and it is more peaceful. Strength and speed are gone, but we have tools – swords, bows. You would not be able to smell or hear as you do now.”  
  
“The way the Lady gives us peace,” Swiftrunner interjected thoughtfully as he lead them across a stream, splashing shallow water about their ankles as some of them paused to scoop up a mouthful on the way. All of them were riveted to the answers Louis was giving, watching him with their wary, wild, golden eyes.  
  
Louis hadn’t any idea what he was talking about, and not being able to understand infuriated his wolf half, bringing it around to have to deal with. Prudently, he let it go. “Humans live in groups and with families too, but they make things. They have permanent places where they have shelter from heat and cold to replace fur.” That alone was stretching his speech abilities and memories, but it seemed enough to satisfy the werewolves, for the moment.  
  
“Our ancestors were human,” Quicksilver informed him, her gravelly voice waning wistfully. “The Lady is helping us to be human again so we can finally leave the forest.”  
  
“There is a way to break the Curse?” That made Louis’ ears literally perk. It was not merely hopeful thinking for the Dalish, then, if those born to the affliction knew of it.  
  
“Yes –“  
  
“Enough!” Swiftrunner barked in a warning growl, twisting to look over his shoulder. “The Lady will speak to him.”  
  
“Who is the Lady?” Louis had to at least try for a straight answer, and thinking helped drown out the compulsion to try and challenge Swiftrunner. He could take him, or the wolf thought he could. Louis wasn’t inclined to argue, but it would be pointless to get into a fight with the gold and brown brute.  
  
“You will see.” Swiftrunner put an immediate halt to the conversation with a show of more teeth than was necessary, and they finished their trek in silence.The forest which had erected a barrier against him and his human companions yielded as nothing but cool mist clinging to his fur when they passed through it as loups garou. An old ruin hovered over them, despondent and crumbling as the forest itself sank tendrils of green into the once great stonework and were pulling it down. There was little left of it, but the sprawl was large enough that it had surely once been a city sometime in the past, it’s history now lost to the corrosion of time. Had men lived in it or one of the other races? Tevinter? That would have been his guess had he spare coppers for gambling.  
  
Whoever it had been had been, they hadn’t completely abandoned it. Physically they were dead for centuries, but he could feel a current of energy settling between his shoulder blades and running down his spine like ice water. The Veil was thinner in the ruins than it was even in the rest of the forest, and it set him on edge the same as it had in the Circle and at Soldier’s Peak. It didn’t seem to perturb the werewolves, and Swiftrunner pulled himself erect with the importance of any ruling monarch as he strode into the midst of the crumbling columns.  
  
Even more disturbing than a rent Veil were the children, or cubs would have been a better word. Young werewolves, half his size and all paws, ears and eyes were tumbling over themselves and a tolerant female adult. She shook her head indulgently as one ear slid out of the grasp of milk teeth from the smallest, and the others climbed over her, wrestling with one another. On seeing Louis, she wrapped her thick arms about them, pulling the wriggling, protesting group toward her as she rolled her lip back from her teeth protectively.  
  
“He will not harm them,” Swiftrunner growled, casting a leery glance on Louis. “I will not permit it.”  
  
The mere fact there were young, sprung from parents who had been born from the werewolf curse and passed it down through the generations as Zathrian had suggested, astonished Louis. It was enough to quell the wolf’s flash of outrage which might have challenged Swiftrunner into a fight.  
  
“Know this,” Swiftrunner intoned with the finality of a felled tree, “if you try and harm the Lady, we will kill you immediately. You won’t be able to defeat all of us.” He made certain that came out as dread realism, because he’d already seen Louis cut through dozens of his brothers and sisters as they tried to protect the forest. Now, however, he was not armed with human weapons and was without his man-pack or their magic. He was the same as they, and if he could not understand the plight which drove them, then he would be slain. Nothing would be permitted to harm the Lady!  
  
Louis snorted at him in answer, not sounding too far removed from what he might have been while completely human.  
  
The dead in the ruins barely stayed still, and it made the wolf-Warden edgy padding through them. Every time he thought he saw a human or elven figure both transparent and white, he’d turn to look at it, only to find it had evaporated. Nothing seemed remotely interested in their passage, but unease went creeping through his fur from nose to hind claws. The old structure itself was huge, but many of the passages had collapsed with ravages of age. Some of the corridors were completely blocked off with debris, while others had trees with trunks as thick as several men standing abreast growing in them, reaching through the broken roof for sunlight. The deeper they went beneath ground, the more it worried Louis, but he supposed it hasn’t come down atop anyone yet, so it was apt to stay where it was long enough for him to see the sky again.  
  
Werewolves who were curled in corners near the trunks of the massive trees lifted sleepy heads to stare at them as they passed, but for all their violent natures which he intimately understood, they seemed almost content. Swiftrunner lead him into a vast, ancient chamber which smelled of mold, dust, earth, and werewolf. Once it might have been a treasure room or storage, but the forest had almost made it her own again with pillar trees and greenery.  
  
As surprised as Louis was to behold the Lady, she seemed equally atonished by him. “You…” her echoing, almost ethereal voice greeted him as he stared back at her. “So one of you has succumbed to the Curse,” she lamented softly gesturing with a hand which had long branches in place of fingers. “I regret that it came to such a tragedy, Mortal. I would not have had it so. I am the Lady of the Forest, as perhaps Swiftrunner has told you.”  
  
Louis blinked, and his front teeth parted under his stare He had seen nothing like her before in his travels, or even heard of anything resembling the entity in front of him. She smelled of the forest itself, as if she was not actually in front of him, and her movements rustled, creaking like windswept branches as the Sylvans. Although her body was shaped like a woman and her long black hair might have been mistaken for human, her flesh was mellow green. Slender white branches wound from her feet up to her stomach. The wide, dark eyes regarding him were nearly sunken and black, but not unfriendly. “What arr-rre you?” he managed with some difficulty, and the tale she told was one to chill the blood in veins which raged with fire.


	4. Trials

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alistair's party is on the trail of what they hope is Louis.

_"We humans fear the beast within the wolf because we do not understand the beast within ourselves" -Gerald Hausman_  
  
Lifting his hand to cup over his mouth and under his nose, Alistair’s voice came out flatly nasal and as his eyes watered. “And I thought they smelled bad…” he let out half his breath, although it didn’t help the wrenching stench. “…on the outside!”  
  
Tornados of black flies were swirling around the corpses, and the reek was enough to make even Oghren pause. Considering he’d spent the better part of his life pasting Darkspawn brains to the stone and did it best with a great sword in one hand a flask in the other, it took a lot to make the dwarf to hesitate for a second look. Parts of the Ogre’s skull were showing through sloughing decomposition as it grinned blankly up at the sky with huge fangs. It was strewn, from what they could tell, over half the clearing. Something hadn’t just killed it, but had a vendetta.  
  
“This stinks worse than Branka’s cooking,” Oghren announced and crouched, his braided mustache swinging back and forth. A smaller, chewed arm was rotting near his feet, but it probably belonged to something on the other side of the battlefield. Everything else on the surface seemed to eat whatever died, the way the darkstalkers and giant spiders did in the Deep Roads. Down there, the spiders preyed on darkspawn if they weren’t the victims of creatures themselves. Under the nerve wracking big sky, nothing seemed to want to clean up dead ogres and hurlocks, so they tainted the land wherever they dropped, decomposing unless someone burned them. That was partially what Alistair had been doing, because Wardens were immune to the tainted plague the creatures spread by existing. For once, they’d all three agreed that it was important stop long enough to set them alight when they could.  
  
Wynne didn’t bother trying to speak, although she was the only one who could facilitate the incineration of the bodies with magic. With silent thanks to the Maker she’d learned long ago to do her incantations non verbally, she pinched her nose closed. Squinting, she used her staff arm to wave aside a buzzing black curtain.  
  
“It’s the same thing as the others.” Trying not to step in too much of the ghastly mess, Alistair used the tip of his sword to turn over what little was left of a Genlock corpse. It’s arms had been torn out of the sockets, and most of the face caved in by what looked like large teeth.  
  
The dwarf nodded, an appreciative note coming into his voice as he stood, resting his sword over his shoulder. “Took down an Ogre. Not bad.”  
  
Wynne had no love of darkspawn, but didn’t share the dwarf’s enthusiasm for carnage, either. “Maker’s breath.”  She finally couldn’t hold reached into her pouch and took out a handkerchief to cover her mouth and nose. “This is worst than the last time, but those wounds do look like the work of claws again.”  
  
“And teeth.” Alistair’s voice barely carried, but he was mainly talking to himself. Propping his gauntlet encased thumb against the bottom of his chin thoughtfully, he used his sword to push over what remained of the Genlock’s skull. He and Louis knew less about darkspawn than Oghren did, which was a source of bitter embarrassment on top of losing everyone, including Duncan, at Ostagar. What little they had been told and learned for themselves, he was certain the blood of the ancient enemy of the Wardens was poisonous. Those few unlucky enough to survive it became ghouls, driven mad by the corruption until they were mindless slaves to it. Surely even werewolves weren’t immune, and although they’d been attacked repeatedly and violently, they weren’t showing sign of the taint. Thank the Maker for small favors, because they were savage enough the way they were. Whatever was biting them might be immune, too, and there was only one werewolf in the forest who could claim that.  
  
“Maybe those flea infested moss lickers are doing our job for us.” A fly tried to buzz up Oghren’s nostril as he broke into Alistair’s thoughts. They’d been standing around too long for his taste, and although the thick trees overhead made the sky a little less unsettling, he still felt exposed. “Let’s get moving. There’s nothing for us around here; they’re already dead.” He sneezed violently, rubbed his nose vigorously with the back of his arm, and muttered a few curses.  
  
“Maybe,” Alistair agreed dubiously, a frown darkening his face. He wished he had the training of a scout or hunter to know for sure what he hoped he was seeing, but only very advanced Templars knew how to track through woods. He doubted there were even many veterans who could do it, considering most mages were run down in cities or by others upholding their civic duty to see Apostates taken to the Circle for the safety of the pious folk. He’d certainly never touched on it, but there was no doubt the darkspawn were being killed by werewolves. He wished he knew if it was the packs who had been doing it, or one in particular.  
  
“You’re still hoping to find Louis,” Wynne told him in a statement, her keen blue eyes watching the young man from over the handkerchief clutched to her nose. Although it was a barricade against the insects, it did very little for the ghastly aroma.  
  
“I just wish I knew,” he admitted. He wasn’t very good at lying, and preferred being honest, anyway. It was just as well, because Alistair told the world his thoughts by the expressions on his face. He hadn’t given up on his brother, no matter what the others thought. “These almost look like it was just one werewolf, but I don’t know if it’s the same one or not.”  
  
“Alistair,” Wynne said gently, resting a hand on his forearm and shaking away another bug assault, “perhaps it is time you come to terms with the fact Louis is gone.”  
  
“He’s not gone!” the Warden argued stubbornly, scowling. “You may not believe it, but I think he’s the one doing all of this!” He swept his arm out over the rot. “He can still think if he’s killing darkspawn. If he can still think, then we can still save him!”  
  
Wynne sighed, meeting frustrated brown eyes, but it would do no good to argue with him when he was in that particular mood. None of them had been resting well before Louis had been attacked, but now they were all strung on needles and pins for fear he or other werewolves might be back. There was no use in fighting among themselves.  
  
“Look,” Alistair resigned, second guessing himself. “Let’s just deal with the darkspawn corpses and move on for now.” Maybe she was right, maybe he was clinging on to something which wasn’t there. If only he knew what to do! Abandoning Louis was out of the question, but there were so many more important things he couldn’t just ignore. What if Zathrian was wrong and there wasn’t any way of curing him? Then what? The Wardens might take all races, but letting a werewolf into their group would be as suicidal as trying to juggle acid flasks, even if it was Louis. What if it isn’t true, he argued with himself? What if Louis really is out there, killing darkspawn because that’s what Grey Wardens do? They couldn’t just turn around and leave him to that kind of fate. Could they? His conscience made up his mind before his brain, and he knew the answer.  
  
“I say if he’s killing darkspawn to let him,” Oghren snorted, backing away from the butchery along with Alistair, giving Wynne room. That was where it began and ended for him. He’d been around the darkspawn threat since he was fresh off the tit, like any Orzammar warrior. Although he might not know anything about werewolves, sprawling trees, green everywhere, or all the things the surfacers thought was normal, they knew the plague which called itself darkspawn. Good warriors fell in battle against them all the time, and he’d seen it happen repeatedly. If Louis was one of them, that’s the way it went, and he hoped whatever Ancestors the humans prayed to that Lou was toasting them somewhere with lycan ale in one hand and a wench on the other.  
  
Wynne momentarily tuned the dwarf out, and was more worried about their young leader. She watched him through thinly veiled concern, even a trace of pity. He obviously didn’t want the responsibilities forced on him, but holding onto Louis with the hope he was still alive was surely folly. Perhaps they could cure him, and they certainly needed the Dalish support for the war. For the moment, at least, personal agendas and stopping the Blight happened to be one and the same. What would happen when they weren’t any longer?  
  
According to Sorel the story teller in their camp, the elves were killing their clan members who had already succumbed to the Curse. There might not be any help for Louis, if he was still alive. Perhaps later Alistair would be more receptive to her discussions, but she did not start an argument as she held her staff out at an angle to her body. She began a soft stream of incantations, summoning the raw energy which flowed through her body, then unleashed it onto the foul corpses. Magical fire spurted in a jet from the end of her staff, and she shaped it with her will, molding it into a storming, swirling funnel which swept over the corrupted flesh. Flame consumed the husks before they could sink into the earth and poison it any worse. Unlike ordinary fire, hers burned without any fuel except mana, although it could easily rampage into a natural disaster if she didn’t snuff it out once it had done its job.  
  
“That’s enough,” Alistair told her with the disarming kindness which might one day be his downfall. He was a decent young man, but time, warfare and difficult decisions might one day kill those parts of him a little at a time. She sincerely hoped that would never happen for his sake as well as theirs, but he was the son of a king. Although he might want to pretend that meant nothing, history had a way of suggesting it would, particularly under their circumstances.  
  
“They won’t pollute the forest any more, and you shouldn’t drain yourself. We might need your spells later.”  
  
There were times he was so indecisive he was as frantic as a dog chasing its own tail, but there were others that she saw growth and change in him. He’d become more confident since Louis went with him on the errand to meet his half sister. The two never spoke about what happened, but it was obvious by the way Alistair drug his feet back to camp and hung his head that it had not been all he’d imagined with his youthful, enthusiastic naivety. She only hoped it would be enough to sustain him in the months to come.  
  
“Let’s just go,” Alistair told them both in a despondent sigh, putting his sword back on place across his shoulders.


	5. Tribulations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alistair and Louis are reunited as Louis tried to keep from tearing apart his former comrades.

_"Wolves are not our brothers; they are not our subordinates, either. They are another nation, caught up just like us in the complex web of time and life." -Henry Beston_  
  
They barely escaped a demon’s trap which was putting travelers to sleep by luring them into what seemed like a harmless campsite, but Alistair had managed to get them all out alive. His templar training and discipline, alongside Wynne’s willpower, kept them both from being drawn in. They’d run afoul of it not long after he’d delivered the recovered acorn to the “Poet Tree” as Oghren called it. Not a bad joke, for a drunk dwarf.  
  
If the tree was telling the truth, the branch they’d been given would allow them they would be able to pass through the barrier and finally get to Witherfang. Alistair turned it over in his hand dubiously, and wasn’t entirely convinced.  It looked like any other piece of firewood to him, but it was all they had to go on so far.  Louis hadn’t been sure it would work, either, when they started the trek into the forest, but more than ever everything depended on getting Witherfang’s heart.  With it, there could be a cure for the Dalish hunters, and he hoped, for his fellow Warden. Everything depending on a broken piece of wood, which was stowed carefully away in a pack with Louis’ weapons.  
  
 _What if the Curse has gone too far and he can’t be cured because he’s already turned?_  
  
Alistair didn’t want to think about that, he really didn’t. Oghren was on watch, but the Warden lay on his side with his arms folded over his chest, eyes open in the pressing darkness beyond the fragile rim of light their small campfire allowed. He and Louis didn’t start out particularly well, although Duncan seemed to command respect from the surly Orlesian. The look on Loghain’s face when Cailan summoned him had almost been worth the price of having to sit out of the battle at the time.  Having an Orlesian to play any part in what they all had assumed to be a triumph against the Darkspawn had been a bitter thing to swallow.  Yet, Loghain had the last laugh. They’d lost all the Wardens, but there were times Alistair wondered if Duncan had known victory wasn’t going to be as secure as Cailan insisted.  
  
Troubled memories made him shift slightly on his bedroll and weighted the edges of his lips into a scowl. Some things even he couldn’t make light of, but Louis had stayed with him and talked him down through the early traveling days. Most of it in monosyllabic sentences, glowering, and friendly as a bearskarn.  Outside appearances could be deceptive, however. Louis quickly proved himself honorable and everything anyone could ask for in a Warden. The only fault Alistair could find in him was the attraction to Morrigan, and the fact they were obviously spending nights together.  
  
At the same time, Louis had told Alistair he didn’t especially trust Morrigan, which was baffling. They’d dropped the subject shortly thereafter, although Louis suggested his way of thinking had something to do with Fereldens and Orlesian outlooks. That hadn’t made it any clearer, even when Louis tried to explain the rationale of keeping one’s friends close and enemies closer. It still sounded as if he liked Morrigan, or they were at least enjoying…. He really, really did _not_ want to think about that, and closed his eyes tightly to erase even the hint of mental imagery.  
  
There were occasions the hostile Warden sounded almost homesick for the teaming streets of Val Royeaux, although he never divulged exactly why he’d been traded to Ferelden, aside from something which had to do with disciplinary issues. If it had been Wardens who had gotten him drunk or someone else, the story never could be pried out. All Alistair knew was it involved someone talking Louis into a tattoo which he hadn’t wanted. If it was the one on his face or he had others, elsewhere, Alistair hadn’t asked.  Oghren had, and there was nearly a fight in the middle of Camp which Leliana helped Alistair break up.  
  
By self admission, the Orlesian was rough around the edges and had a hot temper. Even as unapproachable as he could seem, Louis hadn’t hesitated to stick by all of them when they had personal errands. He had tolerated the meeting with Goldanna, although as things degraded, so had Louis’ temper. Before Alistair could pull his fellow Warden back out the door, Louis had began yelling at her loudly enough to shake the rafters in his thick Orlesian accent. He’d been afraid the guard might come bursting in the doors to “rescue” his half sister. Disaster although it was, his surly friend had convinced him to start looking out for himself. He’d done something for Oghren when they were in the vicinity of Lake Calenhad, and most recently promised Wynne they’d watch for one of her old apprentices in the forest. Without Louis, Alistair supposed with a sinking feeling that was his responsibility now. He wouldn’t let Wynne down if he could help it, and didn’t like all the feeling of responsibility which was suffocating him. They had to get Louis back before leaving the forest.  Leliana would probably stay, but Alistair was sure Morrigan would never follow him if he was group leader.  Zevran might try and kill him considering half the contract would have taken care of itself, and who could say with Sten and Shale would do? They had to get Louis back, but his murky thoughts were interrupted with the overwhelming belch ripe with dwarven ale.  
  
“Something’s out there,” Oghren uttered, poking Alistair in the shoulder and thinking about “accidentally” nudging Wynne somewhere interesting. Unfortunately the last time he’d tried that, she’d threatened him with lightning, and he wouldn’t have put it past her to have a bolt strung up his arse. She might not actually do it, but then again, he wasn’t willing to risk being lit up. He settled for calling out to her. “Wynne, wake up.”  
  
None of them were heavy sleepers in the open, considering it was one of the best ways to wake up dead, and the forest had made rest even more fitful than usual. It had strange effects on their dreams and the woods themselves never quieted. Wynne pushed herself up instantly on her hip, grabbing her staff, and speaking in a hushed whisper. “What is it?”  
  
Oghren took a long pull of his special brew from his flask, smacking his lips and bared his sword. “Something’s out there. It’s big, it won’t go away, so I say we kill it.”  
  
Wynne pinched the bridge of her nose, withholding a sigh as she tossed her light blanket from her legs. “Before we even know what ‘it’ is?”  Without looking, she scooped up her staff and used it to help her rise to her feet.  
  
“Lady, there’s a stone’s weight of things in this forest trying to kill us. It’s not worth taking the chance. Even the trees are trying to turn us into a nug roast out here.”  
  
“Shhh,” Alistair told them both under his breath, hoping to end the argument without having to actually intercede or make a decision. It was easier when the pair of them agreed on a course of action, but that was getting rarer. It always came down for him to mediate and his responsibility to decide what they were going to do. He was really coming to hate it, and put his back to the fire, listening to the occasional rustle of the underbrush. Whatever it was, it was large. One of the sylvans? If it was a werewolf, it wouldn’t be alone, and they always traveled in packs.  
  
Louis’ fur lifted along his spine and hackles bristled as he raised himself full height. His muzzle dipped and ears revolved, pitting a silent battle against himself. _Not prey. Pack. No. Not my kind._ The conflict was irreconcilable in his beast brain. He snapped at the air, clicking his teeth together and making Alistair startle at the sound. _Fear smell. Prey._ No! _They are not meat._ Calming himself with the internal chant of his human lineage, Louis pushed it through his sluggish mind in his native Orlesian tongue. Following it with a healthy deluge of creative mental profanity, he felt slightly more normal.  
  
Alistair lifted his shield nearly to his eyes, half crouching down in preparation for attack, and pointing his blade forward. He could barely see the werewolf except for the occasional flash of red where the fire behind him reflected from its eyes, but it wasn’t attacking. Some of them had spoken, and he couldn’t completely abandon hope that Louis was still alive, no matter what his friends believed. “Why are you here?” he demanded in a low, taut voice, not truly expecting an answer.  
  
A soft growl undulated from the darkness, gradually forming words. “Won't attack you.”  Louis’ tongue darted between his teeth before he bit it, but words made his whiskers prickle strangely at the roots.  
  
“Sodding right you won’t, not unless you want to be sent home in pieces,” Oghren grated, and the challenge in his voice was inadvertently almost enough to provoke Louis’ lupine nature onto the dwarf’s throat.  
  
“Hello?” Alistair didn’t take his attention off the direction of their intruder, but it was dripping sarcasm as his words were aimed at Oghren. “Do we really want to antagonize something we can’t even see?”  
  
“You have a better idea?” Oghren asked belligerently, “these things aren’t known for their conversation skills. Enough talking, let’s just kill it!”  
  
Louis snarled softly, a world of menace swirling from between bared teeth, and he threw himself into a four limbed pace to help keep himself calm.  
  
“Hear that?” Oghren crowed, “let’s –"  
  
“Hold your position,” Alistair told him with uncharacteristic firmness. “You’re going to stay right where you are, that’s what you’re going to do.” If they were going to make him lead, then by the Maker, that’s exactly what he was going to do, if he wanted it or not.  
  
The confidence and superiority, no matter how tenuous, helped soothe Louis’ simmering rage as the wolf half of him recognized an alpha, although not a particularly powerful one, standing in position. If he was to fight them, Alistair would be attacked first because he was the pack’s leader. Although none of the three realized what was happening inside the werewolf’s skull, their momentary bickering came to ease.  
  
“All right.” Alistair didn’t drop his guard, and put a tree to his back for what little protection it could offer that he was less likely to be flanked and set upon from more vulnerable angles. He and Oghren might have their differences, but he knew he could trust him if it came down to another battle. The Warden’s brows came together, but he dared not take his eyes off the menace of the wolf to look for more of them. “What do you want?”  
  
“Need to talk to you,” it grated out with difficulty, the words coming thick as stale, frozen honey from its jaws. They were never made for speech, and unlike those born Cursed, he had to unlearn speaking to start it over again from fledgling stages.  
  
All the werewolves looked alike to him except Swiftrunner, and Alistair couldn’t tell the males from the females with all the hair. Even so, he had an idea who knew who this one was, or at least who it used to be. He hoped. “Louis?” he called uncertainly, “is that you?” He wanted to believe in the impossible, that somehow his friend had managed to control the Curse the same way Swiftrunner and the others had. They needed him, and Alistair wasn’t too proud to admit it.  
  
Although he’d managed to get Oghren and Wynne through the forest thus far, he didn’t like the fact people were depending on his decisions. If he was wrong about something, people he cared about were going to get hurt or die. The situation he’d put them in presently wasn’t an exception. What if it was a trap? He nervously flicked his eyes into the surrounding darkness, half expecting more wolves to come tearing out at him.  
  
A sigh issued from the darkness, sounding both huge and weary. “How did you know?”  
  
“You’re the only werewolf in the forest growling with an Orlesian accent,” the other Warden told him flippantly.  
  
“Is it really you,” Wynne asked the direction of his voice, suspiciously. “Where have you been?”  
  
“Killing darkspawn, weren’t you?” Oghren answered for him, “that was you, wasn’t it? Alistair saw your tracks.”  
  
“Yes. The taint still draws me, and I have to kill. Kill.  The rage.  I can’t stop myself, so I hunt them.”  
  
Once he caught a glimpse of the hunched body and looked closely, the dark fur looked familiar to Alistair. He took a cautious half step closer. “Thank the Maker you’re alive!”  
  
Louis chortled a gravely sound which Alistair couldn’t place at first, then realized it was something which might have passed for sardonic laughter. “Don’t be thankful, yet.” It took everything in him not to leap at Alistair, sinking his teeth into vulnerable flesh. So weak in comparison… easy to take control. “I can’t stay long. The anger … the hunger… I may not be able to control it forever.”  
  
“You can, I know you would.” Alistair had reservations about what he was saying, but at the same time he wanted to believe his friend had the strength to beat anything.    
  
“You’re a good man, Louis,” Wynne agreed, although even more cautiously than the young Warden. She had a white knuckle, two handed grip on her staff and had it pointed forward, feet braced for the worst.  
  
“For an Orlesian?” The same grating, eerie sound of crushed rocks smeared with a bitter growl which was a laugh came through the dark.  
  
“No,” Alistair retorted softly, lowering his shield and sword, “as a Grey Warden.”  
  
“Touche.’ There are things you need to know.  What Swiftrunner hinted at before. He wouldn’t tell us. At least not when we were all… normal.” Louis shook his shaggy head and began pacing on all fours to relieve the potentially lethal tension he was fighting to lunge at his comrades.  
  
“Such as?” Alistair didn’t trust the situation quite enough to put his sword away, particularly catching a glimpse of Louis’ bulk whipping restlessly to and fro.  
  
“The Dalish Keeper is the source of the Curse. There is a spirit here, brought to existence by him from the forest itself. It was revenge against crimes committed against Zathrian’s family centuries ago. It’s what the Loups Garou are protecting because she stills their rage and brings up the human side of their natures. These werewolves have never been human and were born this way. They worship the Lady, and want an end to the Curse. I don’t know if it can be broken.”  
  
“It has to be, I can’t just … leave you like this,” Alistair protested, shaking his head adamently. “If we cure the hunters with Witherfang’s heart, we cure you, too.”  
  
“It may not be so simple.” Louis dug furrows into the earth with his claws, turning the bloodlust in a less lethal direction, plowing a rut with an angry swipe of his front paw. “Alistair. Listen to me. You need allies. We stop the Blight, no matter what the cost. No matter the sacrifice. If Zathrian’s duplicity will not get you the allies we need, then take us – the werewolves. We will be your army. If I have to, I’ll take control of the pack myself, and we will fight at your side.”  
  
“‘We,’” Alistair repeated, flabbergasted, “but you’re not one of them! Not forever – I told you, we’ll find the cure –“  
  
“You’re a Grey Warden!” Louis snapped mercilessly, “stop the Blight! Forget about me unless you can use me! Let go of sentiment! We kill the archdemon. No matter the cost!”  
  
“Not if it’s you, and not if we can do something about it!”  
  
“You may not be able to,” Louis intoned darkly, his ears pinning back as he halted his pacing. “Stop the Blight, Alistair. No matter what the cost,” he repeated. “Are you a Grey Warden or aren’t you?”  
  
The rebuke stung his pride, and Alistair grimaced. “I suppose you’re right,” he muttered, gritting his back teeth together. “All right, but I’m going to do everything I can to break this Curse first. I won’t just leave you this way.”  
  
“Just remember what I’ve told you,” Louis sighed, and turned away from his friend, stalking toward the dark bleakness of the forest.  
  
“Louis?” Alistair called after a few seconds, but there was no answer. “Louis!” he repeated in a shout, letting the tip of his sword rest on the ground.  
  
A huge exhalation halted the werewolf with one front hand-paw poised over the ground. The call of the forest was strong, like heady wine, and the more he drank of it, the less satisfied he was. His hand came down slowly, the fingers gripping into the mulch, but almost against his will, he turned his head back toward his friends. My pack. These are my pack.  
  
“Louis!” Alistair yelled again, coming toward him, and pushed a clump of fern fronds aside with the flat face of his shield.  
  
“What!” he growled back irritably, swinging his broad head to squint over his shoulder, trying to ignore the stink of fear rolling off the three of them.  
  
That gave Alistair pause, and he hadn’t known exactly what he was going to say. He finally shrugged and asked, “where are you going?”  
  
“I can’t stay.” Turning back fully and crouching, he peered toward the other man’s silhouette, and more importantly, scented how the armor smelled faintly of old parchment, lyrium dust, blood, Mabari, and darkspawn.  
  
“Why not?” Alistair’s tone didn’t plead, but was flatly curious.  He wasn't stupid, in spite of what some witches thought, but surely Louis wasn't going to leave?  Not already?  
  
Louis tongue parted his jaws and passed over his nose. One ear rotated toward the distant sound of a Blight wolf. Its song was as twisted and tortured as the beast itself. “I told you. I can’t trust myself not to attack one of you.”  
  
Alistair took a deep breath, held it for the mental count of three seconds, and released it. “Are you a Grey Warden or aren’t you?” he flung back at him, squaring his feet and ignoring Wynne.  
  
“Alistair!” the mage beseeched, alarmed. “He’s been afflicted by the Curse. Let him go – we will do our best to help him but –“  
  
“Are you or aren’t you, Louis?” He was the one who started the idea that people had to stand up for themselves and not let others walk over them, so that’s exactly what he was doing. It was probably the stupidest idea he’d had in his life. Assuming he lived, he was going to blame Louis for it later.  If Louis killed him, he was going to blame him anyway.  
  
Lunging, Louis towered over him, snarling and flattening his ears as his hackles ruffled on his shoulders. “I told you I would–“  
  
“I know what you told me,” Alistair interrupted loudly, taking a cue from their former leader and raising his voice so he couldn’t be ignored. Lifting sword and shield, he stared up at the bottom of Louis’ chin. “You’re going to listen to me for once! You’re killing darkspawn, I understand that, but you’re one of the last two Grey Wardens in Ferelden. Are you just going to give up and leave it to us to find the Cure? Is that it?” In spite of the fact Louis was looming over him, he stood his ground, not making jokes or letting someone else make the decisions. Louis had been formidable enough as a human warrior, but there was no doubt he was now able to rip their arms out and tear them into bloody shreds from the condition of the Ogre they’d seen earlier that day.  
  
Alistair’s heart was hammering like a dwarven forgemaster in his chest, and Louis could smell the fear pulsing off of him in spite of all the bravado. Challenge. Attack. Challenge! “No!” the word came out almost as a whine as he clapped his paws against his face, struggling against a duel nature. My friends, he tried telling himself, I won’t…! They are the Pack. The Pack. His ribs were inflating and relaxing like bellows as he tried to hold on to his own mind. Challenge! The impulse was blinding, crippling his ability to think, and he turned on Alistair. Although both shield and sword were in place, the other Warden was reluctant to actually fight him. He’d shifted his posture, putting his weight backward, defensively, ready to block rather than attack. His shoulders dropped, chin coming closer to his chest, and troubled eyes didn’t meet the werewolf’s.  
  
 _Submission._ Had it been Oghren, Louis’ lupine nature would have been unbridled, throwing him into a fight which would have had no winner, but in spite of Alistair leading their group, he was not showing dominance. No challenge. To his beasts’ brain, Louis had asserted his right of leadership to the Pack, and it chopped short the murderous instincts just enough. Had it been anyone but Alistair, neither of them would have been so lucky.  
  
Letting go of the breath he’d been holding, Alistair ventured almost timidly, “Louis?” When the monster creature who had been his brother nodded, Alistair quietly gripped a black pelted shoulder. “Help us – you know I can’t do this on my own. We have a way through the barrier, so all we have to do is find Witherfang.”  
  
“You are such an idiot,” Louis rumbled. Dropping to all fours, he noisily shook, making his ears flap.  
  
“You’re not the first person to tell me that,” Alistair quipped, relief splashing over him as he let go of Louis’ fur. “At least you’ll be warm at night,” he commented lightly, fluffing the same shoulder, and trying to break the tension. “Although I doubt you’ll smell very good when it rains.”  
  
“Shut up,” the werewolf growled at him, lifting half his lip over his teeth and narrowing one eye. The impulse to lunge had faded, but it was going to be a constant struggle. “I can’t stay in your camp,” he finally grated out, “but I’ll be close.”  
  
“Fair enough,” Alistair agreed, breathing a silent wave of gratitude, then turned to face the rebuttal from Wynne and Oghren which he knew was coming.  



End file.
